What Is Strategy?

Porter's short, canonical HBR article that argues strategy is about choosing to do things differently, not about doing the same things better — operational effectiveness is necessary but not strategic. The piece's most useful distinction is between activities that improve operational effectiveness (convergent, winnable only on a treadmill) and activities that create a distinctive strategic position (fit between activities, hard to imitate). For product direction, reading Porter's original is more useful than reading summaries of Porter — the argument is more specific than the summaries suggest and more applicable to actual strategy conversations. Short, dense, canonical. Pair with Magretta for the book-length expansion and Rumelt for the operational critique.